Aquarium

We had a great trip today to the New England Aquarium! Thank you to Ms. Bagni and Mrs. Conaway for coming with us!

Here are some highlights....

Some artwork...

Students made sea turtles and whales!

What I see outside my window....

Penguins!

Superfish

Today we had our Superfish program with Mr. Mussleman. 

Check out the octopus!

How many legs does an octopus have? 

Mr. Musselman talked to us about different things we may see tomorrow at the aquarium! It was a blast!

We even got to see the octopus up close and touch it!! 

January 27, 2017

What another busy week we had here in room 113!

Students have completed a lot of different artwork in preparation for our trip to the Aquarium next week. Students made sharks out of newspaper that went home this week as well as finished their House for Hermit Crab individual innovations. They painted with watercolors their covers of their books and they came out beautiful. We made sea turtles, whales, and penguins. We have our very own aquarium in Room 113!

The House for Hermit Crab books will be coming home as soon as your child has shared theirs with the class. The repetition of the language in the book will help students to develop their fluency when they read. I would encourage you to save this book and other books the students bring home and practice reading them often. You can have your student look for different sight words in the text as well as other words they know.

Students have been busy writing in their journals. We learned about a sea turtle and students wrote a fact that they found interesting. Ask your student how much a sea turtle can weigh or where they lay eggs! We also have been talking about the different parts of a fish. Students drew a picture of a fish and labeled the different parts.

We have also been working hard on syllables this week. Students graphed different pictures in the different syllables. This will be important when they write words with more than one syllable to help sound out the sounds they know or when they are reading.  You can practice syllables at home by using different words or objects around your house and asking your student to tell you how many syllables in the word. We have practiced with claps or with putting our hands under our jaws to feel how many times our jaws drop when we say different words.

Today we had our Fish Day! Students were able to go to the other kindergarten classrooms to create different fish artwork. We will have our very own Francis Wyman Aquarium in the Kindergarten hall. Thank you so much to Mrs. Andrews for helping out with the projects!

We will be having a program called Superfish in school on Monday. Mr. Musselman from the Burlington Science Center comes and talks to us about fish and their different parts. He also talks to us about different sea creatures we might see at the aquarium. It is always fun!

Report cards were sent home at the beginning of the week. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out. In March we will have our next round of conferences. I will send home a schedule as it gets closer.

We have been working on our number writing in school, but it always helps to practice at home too. You can practice as homework. Also, the math sheets that we do in school have an additional homework piece at the end you can do with your child and return, if you would like.

We will celebrate Valentine’s Day in school. Students are welcome to bring a valentine for everyone in the class. Please have your student write everyone’s name on the valentine. You can send them in whenever they are done. Unfortunately we cannot have any valentines with food or candy. Students are welcome to bring in an extra snack on Valentine’s Day. They are welcome to eat it while they open their valentines. Today in folders was a class list with everyone’s names.

As a reminder- please do not send in anything for snack that contains nuts. It is sometimes helpful to talk to your child about what they can have for snack out of their bag before snack time. Thanks!

Please keep practicing at home how to dress for the cold weather. We are still heading outside if the temperature is above 20 degrees. It would also be helpful to start teaching students how to tie their boots as well.

From the PTO:

It's time to start sending in those Box Tops again! The PTO is holding a classroom contest, the classroom that sends in the most Box Tops will win a prize! Please make sure to send in your Box Tops in a Ziploc bag labeled with student's first name, last name, and homeroom number. Box Tops must be sent in by February 15th to be counted for the contest.

The next used book store at Francis Wyman will be Wednesday, February 15th. Mrs. Murphy, one of our reading specialists, does one used book store a month. She is always looking for volunteers. If you would like to help out, send her an email at dmurphy@bpsk12.org

Happy Friday!

Over the past week we have been busy getting ready for our trip to the Aquarium! We have been learning a lot about fish and other animals that live in the ocean. Ask your child how many legs an octopus has! We have written in our journals and learned new poems. I am very impressed how students are using their knowledge of letters and letter sounds to write what they hear in their journals. All students are being encouraged now to write in full sentences, some students more than one sentence! Students have made different ocean life art work. It has brighten up our room. 

In math we finished our unit on addition. We talked a lot about how addition is taking two parts and putting them together to make a whole. We started subtraction this week. We have been talking about how subtraction is taking a part away from the whole. Please practice with your students the addition facts that I sent home. Students are expected to answer the facts in 3 seconds to be fluent. I will be sending home subtraction facts soon for you to practice with your student. They are also expected to answer the subtraction facts in 3 seconds to be fluent. 

Some important things coming up:

We are headed to the New England Aquarium on January 31st. If you still haven't sent in the money for the trip, please do so as soon as possible. As always, if your child is not going to attend, please let me know. 

Fish Day will be Friday January 27th. During Fish Day students are allowed to go to other classrooms to complete different fish artwork projects. If you would like to volunteer, please let me know. The time will be from 9:15 until 10:00. You will need to be CORIed and attend a Principal's Confidentiality meeting. 

The next Principal's Confidentiality meeting will be Thursday the 26th at 8:00 in the library. Once you do one meeting you are all set for your student's time at Francis Wyman School. 

Wee Deliver- a Francis Wyman postal service will begin February 6th until the 14th. Students in 3rd grade run a school-wide post office. If you would like to write a letter to your student, there will be a mailbox outside the office. We are 113 Friend Place, Burlington MA 01803. You can drop off your letter by the office or you can send it in your student's folder and I can take care of it for you.

Scholastic Book Orders will be due the 26th. You can order online through the website link at the top of the blog. 

I am still looking for more volunteers to be a guest reader in our classroom. I am looking to start a schedule soon. Please send me a note or an email if you would like to be a guest reader. Thank you!

Wish List:

We are in need of a few items in our classroom for different projects. We are looking for:

-paper plates

-tissue paper

-paper towel rolls

-toilet paper rolls

-newspaper

Acts of Kindness

                          

Today we read two special books: Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes and What Does It Mean To Be Kind? by Rana DiOrio

As a class we talked about what it means sometimes when we are worried about different things and different fears we can have. Wemberly is a little girl mouse who is always worried about something, and her fears get greater as she gets closer to going to school. We talked about how it is okay to be worried about things, and just like Wemberly, a friend can be a great resource for us when we are worried.

In What Does It Mean To Be Kind? it talks about different ways that people can be kind to each other- such as forgiving someone who has hurt you or giving a compliment or celebrating all differences. Keeping with our school wide SOAR motto, we talked about what it means to be kind in our classroom and to our friends. Our last SOAR whole school assembly focused on acts of kindness.

 Tonight, the students have homework. Keeping with acts of kindness, I asked them to do something kind. If you could talk to your student about different ways to be kind at home that would be helpful. Tomorrow we will write about different ways that we were helpful at home. I can't wait to see what different acts of kindness they did tonight!